As of January 1, 2019, we will no longer send library notices via postal mail. (Mailed notices include alerts about holds, due dates, or fines.) This will save staff time and reduce waste - saving more than $18,000 annually. There are several free and easy ways to access your library account. Add an email address to receive email notices, check your account online, or call or visit your local library for assistance.

The
Novato Library is currently closed for construction (More details)

L.A. City Limits

African American Los Angeles From the Great Depression to the Present

In 1964 an Urban League survey ranked Los Angeles as the most desirable city for African Americans to live in. In 1965 the city burst into flames during one of the worst race riots in the nation's history. How the city came to such a pass--embodying both the best and worst of what urban America offered black migrants from the South--is the story told for the first time in this history of modern black Los Angeles. A clear-eyed and compelling look at black struggles for equality in L.A.'s neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces from the Great Depression to our day, L.A. City Limits critically refocuses the ongoing debate about the origins of America's racial and urban crisis.

Challenging previous analysts' near-exclusive focus on northern "rust-belt" cities devastated by de-industrialization, Josh Sides asserts that the cities to which black southerners migrated profoundly affected how they fared. He shows how L.A.'s diverse racial composition, dispersive geography, and dynamic postwar economy often created opportunities--and limits--quite different from those encountered by blacks in the urban North.